Saturday, 8 August 2015

“Music is well
said to be the speech of angels.” - Thomas CarlyleAttilio Malachia Ariosti
(5 November 1666 – 1729) was a Servite Friar and Italian composer in the
Baroque style, born in Bologna. He produced more than 30 operas and oratorios,
numerous cantatas and instrumental works.Ariosti was born
into the middle class. He became a monk in 1688 at age 22, but he soon obtained
permission to leave the order and become a composer in the court of the Duke of
Mantua and Monferrato. He became a deacon in 1692, the same year he achieved
the post of organist at Santa Maria dei Servi in Bologna.In 1697, he went
to Berlin at the request of Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, Queen of Prussia, a
great-granddaughter of James I of England and daughter of the Electress Sophia
of Hanover, an enlightened patroness of the arts with a keen interest in music.
After enjoying the favour of the Queen, Ariosti wrote and collaborated in the
writing of a number of stage works performed for the court in Berlin. He
resided in Berlin as the court composer until 1703.His first opera
was performed in Venice in 1697. From 1703 to 1709 he was the General Austrian
Agent for Italy, during the reign of Joseph I. After 1716 he achieved enormous
success in Paris and London. In London, he shared with Georg Frideric Handel
and Giovanni Bononcini the directorship of the Royal Academy of Music, and he
played the viola d’amore in an entr’acte in Handel’s “Amadigi di Gaula”.In 1724 he
published a Collection of Cantatas, and Lessons for the Viola d’ Amore, which
he sold by subscription. This publication may have been the most successful
sale of music by subscription in the 18th century.Although he
could sing, write drama, play the violoncello and harpsichord; his favourite
instrument was the viola d’ amore, for which he wrote 21 solo sonatas. These
are usually called the Stockholm Sonatas, as the sole surviving source for most
of them is in the Statens Musikbibliotek in Stockholm, Sweden. The Stockholm
Sonatas display Ariosti’s liking for surprising harmonies, his inventive use of
silence, and his wit.Here are six
lessons for viola d’ amore (London, 1724), played by Thomas Georgi (viola d’ amore),
Joëlle Morton (viola da gamba & great bass viol) and Lucas Harris (theorbo,
archlute, and baroque guitar).

Friday, 7 August 2015

“Going meat-free
can make a huge difference. Studies show that vegetarians are, on average, 10
to 20 pounds lighter than meat-eaters and that a vegetarian diet reduces our
risk of heart disease by 40 percent and adds seven or more years to our
lifespan.” - Ingrid NewkirkThe following
vegie goulash recipe can be adapted so that you use whatever seasonal
vegetables are available. Feel free to experiment and modify it to your own
tastes.Vegetarian GoulashIngredients1/2 cup red
kidney beans1/2 cup haricot
beans4 onions, finely
chopped4 clove garlic,
crushed or finely chopped2 carrots, diced3 zucchini,
diced2 tablespoons olive
oil1 heaped
teaspoon sweet paprikapinch of nutmega bunch of
parsley finely choppeda tin of
tomatoes (or fresh tomatoes stewed)140 mL of tomato
juiceMethodSoak beans
overnight. Boil water in a saucepan and put in beans. Simmer for one to two
hours or until tender. Fry onion in oil in a medium sized saucepan until
translucent. Add garlic and fry for a few seconds more. Add carrots and
continue frying for one minute. Add the zucchini, paprika, nutmeg, parsley and
the crushed tomatoes. Add the beans and everything else and cook over a low
heat for about 10 minutes. Serve with salad and crunchy bread, and topped with
a little yoghurt.Add your own favourite recipes below using the Linky tool:

Thursday, 6 August 2015

“Japan learned from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the tragedy wrought by nuclear weapons must never be repeated and that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.” - Daisaku IkedaIn August 1945, during the final stage of the Second World War, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The two bombings, which killed at least 129,000 people, remain the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history. As the war entered its sixth and final year, the Allies had begun to prepare for what was anticipated to be a very costly invasion of the Japanese mainland. This was preceded by an immensely destructive firebombing campaign that obliterated many Japanese cities.The war in Europe had concluded when Nazi Germany signed its instrument of surrender on May 8, 1945, but with the Japanese refusal to accept the Allies’ demands for unconditional surrender, the Pacific War dragged on. Together with the United Kingdom and China, the United States called for the unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces in the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, 1945; this was buttressed with the threat of “prompt and utter destruction”.By August 1945, the Allied “Manhattan Project” had successfully detonated an atomic device in the New Mexico desert and subsequently produced atomic weapons based on two alternate designs. The 509th Composite Group of the U.S. Army Air Forces was equipped with the specialised Silverplate version of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, that could deliver them from Tinian in the Mariana Islands. A uranium gun-type atomic bomb (Little Boy) was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, followed by a plutonium implosion-type bomb (Fat Man) on the city of Nagasaki on August 9.Little Boy exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima in a blast equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT, destroying five square miles of the city. Within the first two to four months of the bombings, the acute effects of the atomic bombings killed 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 39,000–80,000 in Nagasaki; roughly half of the deaths in each city occurred on the first day. During the following months, large numbers died from the effect of burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries, compounded by illness and malnutrition. In both cities, most of the dead were civilians, although Hiroshima had a sizable military garrison. On August 15, just days after the bombing of Nagasaki and the Soviet Union's declaration of war, Japan announced its surrender to the Allies. On September 2, it signed the instrument of surrender, effectively ending World War II. The role of the bombings in Japan’s surrender and their ethical justification are still debated.In Japan, the survivors of the bombings are called hibakusha (“explosion-affected people”). The shock and great suffering in the wake of the bombings caused Japan to seek the abolition of nuclear weapons from the world ever since, putting in place one of the world’s most committed and extensive non-nuclear policies. More than 400,000 hibakusha (258,310 in Hiroshima and 145,984 in Nagasaki) are recorded in Japan.This is a day to:

• Remember those who died and were wounded by the bombing of Hiroshima

• Remember all people of every nation who died and were wounded during World War II

• Assert the right of everyone on earth to live a life free from the fear of war

Wednesday, 5 August 2015

“There’s
something about the sound of a train that's very romantic and nostalgic and
hopeful.” - Paul SimonThis week’s
Poets United Mid-Week Motif is “Saying the Names With Love”, a thematic tribute to the names
of the places we love. Let me take you with my poem on a great train journey
across Australia.The Indian
Pacific is an Australian passenger rail service that operates between Sydney,
on the Pacific Ocean, and Perth, on the Indian Ocean. It is one of the few
truly transcontinental trains in the world. The train first ran in February
1970 after the completion of gauge conversion projects in South and Western
Australia. The train’s route includes the world’s longest straight stretch of
railway track, a 478-kilometre (297 mi) stretch of the Trans-Australian Railway
over the Nullarbor Plain.The service was
originally operated jointly by the New South Wales Government Railways, South
Australian Railways, Commonwealth Railways and Western Australian Government
Railways, until February 1993 when Australian National took full ownership. In
October 1997 the Indian Pacific was sold to Great Southern Rail. A one-way trip
originally took 75 hours, but with line and efficiency improvements it now
takes 65 hours. The train currently has four classes, branded as Platinum, Gold
Service and Red Service Sleeper and Red Service Daynighter and also a motorail
service to convey passengers’ motor vehicles.Train TicketMy birthday gift
came in an envelope –Thick, creamy
paper, hand-addressed –Stout enough to
enclose sheaves of printed matter;No sender’s
name, a fascinating mystery…Intrigued, I
open carefully to find within:A train ticket
and an itinerary –Sydney to Perth,
transcontinental,On the Indian
Pacific…The sender knows
me well, I think,And makes my
fervent wish, reality –A train journey
of thousands of milesAcross this
great wide land of ours.From Sydney, the
Harbour City,Westward through
the green, fertile valleysOf New South
Wales, beyond the rolling hillsAnd distant
mountains of Condobolin,To the rugged
Outback,And the lavishly painted desert, red earthAnd rich
ore-hearted, rocky outcropsOf silver
encrusted, Broken Hill…Then South, to
the city of churches:Adelaide, beside
the River Torrens,And close enough
to the Barossa ValleyTo grow tipsy on
sunny Summer afternoons.From Crystal
Brook, going North,To Port Augusta,
a hub of industry and trade,Close to the
violet-tinged Flinders Ranges,And the wild
beauty of Arkaroola and Pichi Richi.Then West, again
through Cook,And the
straightest, longest stretchOf railroad
track, the world over,Three hundred
miles across the arid Nullarbor.To Kalgoorlie,
golden city of mines,Elegant, stately
and forlorn amongst the rocks –The racecourse,
grand old hotels and the Skimpies,Recalling a
rowdy past and miners’ boisterous antics.And then on the
last leg of the journey,To cosmopolitan
Perth, the jewel of the West,A city of parks
and rivers, sandy beaches, hillsAnd bustling
city life and skyscrapers.A journey, a
gift, and an expectation,Who else could
have given me this, but you?At end of the
journey my greater gift awaits;Taking the slow
suburban train to Fremantle,I know you will
be there to greet meAt our old
rendezvous point up on the Round House…

Tuesday, 4 August 2015

“Silence is the
sleep that nourishes wisdom.” - Francis BaconCatholics
celebrate the feast day of St
Eleutherius today, while the Greek Orthodox faith commemorates The Feast of
the Seven Ephesian Boys. These are
also known as the Seven Sleepers of
Ephesus (Arabic: اصحاب الکھف aṣḥāb al kahf, “companions of the cave”). It is
a story of a group of youths who hid inside a cave outside the city of Ephesus
around 250 AD, to escape a persecution. The king forced all his kingdom to
worship idols and whoever didn’t would be killed. These young men escaped as
their faith in God (their belief varies by regional origin) was strong and
refused to worship idols. The story is one of the many examples of the legend
about a man who falls asleep and years after wakes up to find the world
changed.It is also Independence
(National) Day I in Burkina Faso (since 1960); and National Day in the Cook
Islands; while El Salvador celebrates Summer Day II.Burkina Faso is a
land-locked country of Western Africa bordering with Mali, Niger, Benin, Togo,
Ghana and the Ivory Coast. It is 274,000 square km in area and its population
is 9 million people. The capital city is Ouangadougou while other towns are
Tenkodogo, Bobo-Dioulasso, Ouahigouya and Banfora. The country was annexed by
France in 1896 and became independent in 1960, its name changing to Burkina
Faso from Upper Volta in 1984. The country has poor soils with frequent
droughts in the North that threaten the savannah and seriously affect the
struggling economy. There are virtually no industries most people relying on
subsistence farming. Cattle and cotton are exported.It is the anniversary of the birth of:Urban VII (Giambattista
Castagna), Pope of Rome (1521);Nicolas Jacques Conté,
inventor of the pencil (1755);Edward Irving, founder of
Catholic Apostolics (1792);Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet
(1792);Knut Hamsun, Norwegian
writer (1859);Elizabeth, British queen
mother (1900);David Russell Lange, NZ
prime minister (1942).The
morning glory, Ipomoea purpurea, is the flower for today’s birthdays. It symbolises affectation and in the language
of flowers means: “She loved you”. In
the 1960s the seeds of this flower were thought to contain a hallucinogenic
drug, but investigations since then have disproved this belief.In 1693 on this day, Dom Perignon discovered
champagne and exclaimed, as the bubbly poured forth: “I see stars!” Champagne is a lovely drink and there are so
many occasions on which to enjoy it and so many ways to drink it! The best may be to share a bottle with one’s
partner on a special occasion, but I enjoyed it also one Winter’s day for
brunch with some friends in a mixture known as Kir Royale. A few drops of Crème de Cassis liqueur in a
chilled champagne flute and then fill with ice-cold bubbly - very nice!A LamentO World! O Life! O Time!On whose last steps I climb,Trembling at that where I had stood before;When will return the glory of your prime?No more -Oh, never more!Out of the day and nightA joy has taken flight:Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoarMove my faint heart with grief, but with delightNo more -Oh, never more!Percy Bysshe Shelley

Monday, 3 August 2015

“A conservative
is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt.” -
Woodrow WilsonWe watched an
old Swedish film last weekend, the 1992, Colin Nutley movie, “Änglagård”
(“House of Angels”),
starring Helena Bergström, Rikard Wolff, Sven Wollter, Reine Brynolfsson and
Ernst Günther. This was a pleasant, entertaining and bittersweet movie that
concerned itself with prejudice, small town mentality and conformity vs
individuality. The film is very Swedish, even though it is directed by an
Englishman and takes place in a lovely part of the Swedish countryside.A small,
conservative village in Västergötland, Sweden is turned upside-down when an
elderly, lonely old man dies and his mansion with surrounding land and woods,
called “House of Angels”, is inherited by his grand-daughter, Fanny, whom he
had never met. Fanny a vivacious and free-spirited young woman comes to the
village riding on a big black motorcycle with her best friend Zac, wearing
black leather and spikes.The village people do not welcome this unorthodox city
girl, although she manages to win some over with her open, sunny nature. The local
well-to-do entrepreneur and village kingpin, Axel Flogfält had expected that he
would be able to buy the mansion for a good price, but now it seems that Fanny
and Zac have come to stay there. The village is divided into two camps, one for
and one against them…The film is
quite a lot of fun, and while the story does not break any new ground, it is a
study of human nature. As Fanny gathers information provided by the townspeople
about her dead mother and her grandfather, she learns more about herself. The prejudice,
fear of the unknown and the different, and the small-mindedness of the Swedish village
people is captured well by Nutley. Small communities the world over have
similar attitudes and similar characters. The themes of forgiveness and
self-knowledge subtly unfold as Fanny interacts with the people of the village,
but also as she re-evaluates her relationship with Zac.The acting is
good, the direction light as befits the movie and the music well-suited to the
action. The cinematography is beautiful and highlights some of the summery
countryside of a lovely part of Sweden. We enjoyed seeing this light and fluffy
sleeper of a movie, on a DVD which sort of fell in our lap. It is the first of
a trilogy of films, the second being “Änglagård - Andra sommaren” (1994) and the third, “Änglagård - Tredje gången gillt” (2010).
I can’t say we’ll actively look for the sequels, but if we come across the
DVDs, no doubt we’ll watch them sometime…

Sunday, 2 August 2015

“I put my heart
and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.” - Vincent VanGoghVincent Willem van Gogh
(30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Post-Impressionist painter. He was a Dutch
artist whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. His output
includes portraits, self-portraits, landscapes and still lifes. His iconic
renderings of cypresses, wheat fields, sunflowers and starry skies have made
him a popular and well-known artist.He drew as a
child but did not paint until his late twenties; he completed many of his
best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade,
he produced more than 2,100 artworks, including 860 oil paintings and more than
1,300 watercolours, drawings, sketches and prints.Van Gogh was
born to upper middle class parents and spent his early adulthood working for a
firm of art dealers. He travelled between The Hague, London and Paris, after
which he taught in England at Isleworth and Ramsgate. He was deeply religious
as a younger man and aspired to be a pastor. From 1879 he worked as a
missionary in a mining region in Belgium, where he began to sketch people from
the local community. In 1885 he painted “The Potato Eaters”, considered
his first major work. His palette then consisted mainly of sombre earth tones
and showed no sign of the vivid coloration that distinguished his later paintings.In March 1886,
he moved to Paris and discovered the French Impressionists. Later, he moved to
the south of France and was influenced by the strong sunlight he found there.
His paintings grew brighter in colour, and he developed the unique and highly
recognisable style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in 1888.
After years of anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died aged 37
from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.The extent to
which his mental health affected his painting has been widely debated by art
historians. Despite a widespread tendency to romanticise his ill health, modern
critics see an artist deeply frustrated by the inactivity and incoherence
wrought through illness. His late paintings show an artist at the height of his
abilities, completely in control, and according to art critic Robert Hughes, “longing
for concision and grace”.“The Starry
Night”, above, painted in Saint Rémy, in June 1889 (oil on canvas, 73.7 x 92.1 cm and
exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art, New York) is one of Van Gogh’s most
well-known paintings. The artist reveals this about the painting: “This morning
I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but
the morning star, which looked very big.” Van Gogh wrote this to his brother
Theo, from France, and it is these many letters to his brother that tells us
much about his art and the artist.Rooted in
imagination and memory, “The Starry Night” embodies an inner, subjective
expression of van Gogh's response to nature. In thick, sweeping brushstrokes, a
flame-like cypress unites the churning sky and the quiet village below. The
village was partly invented, and the church spire evokes van Gogh’s native
land, the Netherlands.Here is Don
McLean singing his beautiful “Vincent” – a fitting tribute, on the 125th anniversary
of van Gogh’s death:

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WELCOME

Welcome to Nicholas V's Blog on Blogger

I have been blogging daily on this platform for several years now. It is surprising that I have persisted as the world is changing and "microblogging" is now the norm. I blog to amuse myself, make comment on current affairs, externalise some of my creativity, keep notes on things that interest me, learn something new and to surprise myself with things that I discover about this wonderful, and sometimes crazy, world we live in.

I sometimes get the impression that I am on a soapbox delivering a monologue, so your comments are welcome.